USA Today Report Critical of NTSB Investigations of Small Plane and Helicopter Crashes
A USA Today report published this week attributes “shortcomings” in NTSB investigations of private plane and helicopter crashes with compounding the number of deaths in general aviation incidents (reportedly nearly 45,000 since 1964 and roughly nine times greater than the number of deaths in passenger airline crashes). According to the report, investigators “repeatedly overlooked defects and other dangers of private aviation as they blamed individual pilots….The failure of crash investigators to find defective parts, dangerous aircraft designs, inadequate safety features and weak government oversight helped allow hidden hazards to persist for decades, killing or injuring thousands of pilots and passengers.” The report is available at http://www.usatoday.com/longform/news/nation/2014/06/12/lies-coverups-mask-roots-small-aircraft-carnage-unfit-for-flight-part-1/10405323/
